Articles and Resources

QUOTE: In the aftermath of the financial crisis, a growing army of confidential informants — better known as whistle-blowers — has helped federal securities regulators identify and prosecute wrongdoers. Now the same thing is happening at the state level...

QUOTE: When Donald Trump took the stage in Cleveland on Thursday night (July 21), he immediately made some strong comments about law and order. They were, however, in typical Trump fashion, a rather blatant distortion of the facts.

QUOTE: a central, unresolved issue in the debate over balancing public safety and the Second Amendment right to bear arms: just how powerless law enforcement can be when it comes to keeping firearms out of the hands of people who are mentally ill. Connecticut’s law giving the police broad leeway to seize and hold guns for up to a year is actually relatively strict. Most states simply adhere to the federal standard, banning gun possession only after someone is involuntarily committed to a psychiatric facility or designated as mentally ill or incompetent after a court proceeding or other formal legal process....A systematic review of these cases — from cities and counties in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Tennessee — underscores how easy it is for people with serious mental health problems to have guns.

QUOTE: This so-called descendible right of publicity has created a new kind of business: corporations that acquire and market dead people... Congress should step in and enact a federal right of publicity. In doing so, it should establish clear First Amendment protections and set forth a relatively short term for the right of publicity to survive death (perhaps 10 years). Most important, the law should provide a mechanism that allows people to opt out of marketing their identities after death.

QUOTE: It was a mainstay of Jim Crow segregation: for 100 years after the Civil War, Southern white Democrats kept eligible blacks from voting with poll taxes, literacy tests and property requirements...Now, with the help of a 2008 Supreme Court decision, Crawford vs. Marion County (Indiana) Election Board, white Republicans in some areas will keep eligible blacks from voting by requiring driver's licenses.

QUOTE: In a direct slap in the face to consumers, tech industry giants including Microsoft, AT&T, and Verizon are frantically engaged in an effort to kill pro-consumer provisions in a data breach notification bill currently being considered by the Indiana State Senate.

QUOTE: Supporters of [the voter ID] policy argue that...election fraud will be reduced. Opponents of an ID requirement fear it will disenfranchise voters, especially the poor, members of minority groups and the elderly, who are less likely than other voters to have suitable identification.

QUOTE: ...requiring all voters to show government-issued photo identification before being allowed to cast a ballot. State officials promoted the measure as protection against voter fraud. Opponents denounced it as a thinly veiled attempt to suppress Democratic voter turnout in Indiana.

QUOTE: Illinois officials have accused their neighbors to the east of fouling the lake, which has grown steadily cleaner in recent years. Indiana officials say the planned discharge is within the federal limits and accuse their Illinois brethren of grandstanding.

QUOTE: Tens of thousands of Old National Bancorp customers whose personal and financial information was hijacked by a computer hacker cannot recover damages from the Indiana banking institution who lost the data in 2005, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.

QUOTE: Journalism advocates say Sorrell's case offers a glimpse into a struggle playing out as school administrators, often because of a concern about violence, try to keep closer tabs on what students say, read and write.

QUOTE: The civil lawsuit, filed in June by one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, describes an elaborate confidence game in which Martinsville residents with good credit ratings were enlisted last year to join what they believed was a risk-free investment in Indiana real estate. Instead, they found themselves responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid mortgages.

QUOTE: Missouri’s new ID rules — and similar ones adopted last year in Indiana and Georgia — are intended to deter voting by blacks, poor people and other groups that are less likely to have driver’s licenses.

QUOTE: Two inmates are suing Indiana because of a policy that bans graphic magazines, such as Playboy, Penthouse or Hustler...The policy is so broad that it bans personal letters between prisoners and loved ones, and much of the world's great art and literature, the inmates claim.

QUOTE: Indiana is about to turn over its entire toll road for the next 75 years to two foreign companies, making it more expensive to drive... The decision also places Indiana at the leading edge of a nascent trend in which states and local governments are exploring the idea of privatizing parts of the United States' prized interstate highway system.

QUOTE: ...a federal judge who ruled that the daily invocation appeals too often to Jesus Christ and a Christian god. The "systematically sectarian" prayers, U.S. District Judge David F. Hamilton concluded, are barred by the Constitution, which forbids the government to show preference for any religious denomination.

QUOTE: The lawsuit alleges that National City Bank of Indiana, instead of selling the stock shortly after the creation of the trusts in January 2002, held on to the stock through most of the year, a period when the share price tumbled from $75 to $47. The result, he says, "was a decline in the overall value of Ruth Lilly's gift to Americans for the Arts of some $25 million."